What will coronavirus do to sportswear sales? Nike’s China figures offer a clue
- Chinese shoppers are splashing out on activewear online, even after the government told them to remain as inactive as possible
- Despite a number of major sporting events cancelled, sports are one of the few reasons to leave the house in several countries
Given sports news now consists of listing all the events that have been cancelled, sportswear should be taking an equally painful hit.
This is unprecedented stuff. The Olympic Games have been cancelled before through world wars – it happened in 1916, 1940 and 1944 – but in general, the sports industry has been recession-proof. In the wake of September 11 and the financial crisis of 2008, sporting organisations weathered the economic storm better than most, becoming an important source of pleasure for the public, and share prices in apparel brands often grew rather than slumped.
But the coronavirus-enforced closure of both mass events, and gyms and parks, has forced the sports industry to all but close down.
“Sports has always been the arm around the shoulder at the end of major trauma,” said basketball strategist Andy Dolich to The New York Times. “Now sports is right in the middle of it.”
